


maleficent

by bokutoma



Series: sylvix week 2019 [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, School Plays, Slurs, Soft Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Trans Male Character, Trans Sylvain Jose Gautier, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 21:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21043289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: the notes start coming once all the roles for sleeping beauty are castmodern au // fairy tales // letters





	maleficent

**Author's Note:**

> please take care of yourself. there’s only one outright slur (and one that some have reclaimed but is intended as such), and minimal angst, but you are more important than any fic

The notes start coming once all the roles for _Sleeping Beauty_ are cast.

Sylvain’s landed himself the part as the prince, and he literally can’t be more elated if he tries. He really doesn’t know how to tone it down, even though he really shouldn’t be. He has a great voice; even before he started transitioning, it was deep, warm, and full. Still, to be cast not just as a man, but as the _lead_ man...It’s honestly more invigorating than he could have imagined.

Dorothea is Aurora, of course. If anyone ever beats her out for a part, he’ll shit his pants. Maleficent, though...that’s a different story.

Felix, of all people, is playing the Mistress of All Evil.

It fits him, he thinks, and when he tells his best friend so, Felix socks him directly in the stomach.

The notes are a little less welcoming.

_Give up the part, fag_, the first one says. _Theatre doesn’t belong to queers_.

Frankly, that’s just amusing rather than upsetting, because nothing has ever been further from the truth. He’s not sure who left it, but he finds it doesn’t really matter. Once upon a time, it might have genuinely bothered him, back in the days where he was wedged between Miklan’s abuse and his parents’ own uncaring, thoughtless words. Now, though, he had the support of his friends, the first people he had come out to by choice. Miklan is gone - not because Sylvain’s parents are really in favor of supporting him, but because gay and criminal is a lot harder to spin than gay and trans - and Felix has issued an outstanding invitation to join the Fraldarius household, whether Rodrigue likes it or not.

Still, when he shows it to his friends over lunch, laughing because it’s no big deal, not really, Felix isn’t laughing. None of them are, not really, but Dimitri and Ingrid are both doing that high-pitched laugh they only pull out when they’re trying to determine how he really feels.

Felix doesn’t bother with pretense.

“That’s fucked up,” he says around a mouthful of cafeteria spaghetti, somehow sounding no less harsh for it. “And you know it.”

Maybe he’s right, maybe it _does_ bother Sylvain. He worked for this part fair and square, after all, and if no one’s kicking up a fuss about Felix a guy, playing a female part (which they shouldn’t), then there shouldn’t be anything being said about him, a guy in a guy’s role. Still, if it did, it’s not like he can say anything. Everything he is stays buried beneath infinite layers of air and casual humor. How would listen to him?

If a chorus member goes home with a split lip he won’t tell anyone about, if Felix keeps shaking out his hand during their preliminary meeting, knuckles a pale green that no one else seems to notice, he won’t say he’s grateful. That would be like admitting weakness, and for all the shit they give Felix, Sylvain isn’t any better at honesty.

He doesn’t get any more like the first. Even if anyone had thought to pile onto Sylvain for succeeding - they wouldn’t, because despite everyone’s eccentricities, most of the department is like family - Felix is capable of thwarting negative intention with little more than a sharp glance.

Maleficent, indeed.

There are, however, new ones. The handwriting has changed, about as polar opposite as the contents. They’re nice, pleasant even, each one listing something good about Sylvain. He’s not exactly used to positive attention, at least not the way the author is presenting it, kind for kindness’s sake.

_Your eyes light up when you smile_.

It’s not a compliment, at least in the traditional sense. If anything, it’s an observation, but if he’s honest, he likes it better this way. There’s nothing to be gained from stating facts, but it makes him a little more aware of himself, aware of the good things rather than purely what others might enjoy.

_Your hair looks nice when you part it to the side_.

It’s a weird idea, having a secret admirer. He knows women like him, find that they enjoy his company because of his “sensitivity”, whatever that means. The handwriting is careful enough to be one of them, the legions he’s acquired in an effort to feel like a man, before he realized that pussy isn’t a unit of measurement anyone who matters uses. It’s not, though, because it leaks into his insecurities, worms its way into all the things he hates about himself and dismantles them one by one.

_You’re smarter than you pretend you are._

Without a doubt, Felix is the one writing these secret notes. It’s why he hasn’t shown them to anyone else; he’s a private person, Sylvain’s best friend, and it’s almost certain that someone else would come to the same conclusion if he let anyone else look at them.

When they rehearse, Sylvain almost wonders at how excellently Felix plays his part, venomous and vindictive until the end. This is the man everyone else sees, he knows, never without a callous remark or a dagger to the back of everything one holds right.

This is not the Felix that Sylvain knows.

_Everything about you is perfect_.

“Oh come now, Prince Phillip. Why so melancholy?” Felix bites out, voice saccharine and tipped with rusty nails. Their dress rehearsal is nigh, but Sylvain already sees what the audience will: a fearsome being, capable of anything.

Right now, what Felix is set on doing is Sylvain.

_Sothis_, he wishes he had meant that in a different context.

_No matter what, you’ll always have me by your side. We stick together until we die together._

And on opening night, as their play crawls to a close, Sylvain tries to drown the depth of his feeling in the character of Phillip, begs to lose the want from his expression as Felix towers over him, the Mistress of All Evil and the commander of his heart.

“And now, the gates of the dungeon part, and the prince is free to go on his way,” Felix says, bitter glee leaching into his tone, and it’s a struggle to look away, because even when he’s someone almost unrecognizable, he’s still the most beautiful person Sylvain has ever seen. “Off he rides on his noble steed...a valiant figure, straight and tall, to wake his love with love’s first kiss, and prove that true love conquers all!”

_It will_, Sylvain promises himself.

When the curtain falls, Sylvain does with it, and before anyone can intercept him, make him take a breath and consider the consequences of his actions, he’s by Felix’s side, tilting his best friend’s face up toward his with a question in his eyes, heedless of the way the stage makeup smudges and stains his hands green.

Felix answers by tugging him forward, lips finding Sylvain’s with warm hunger.

If Sylvain slips a note into the bouquet Ingrid and Dimitri gave to Felix, one that says, _Everything about you is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen_, then that’s no one’s business but their own.

If Felix does the same with Sylvain’s, this one reading, _You deserve all the love we have to give_, then that’s between the two of them.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter @kingblaiddyd


End file.
